


Summer 19'

by thealphadog



Category: We Were Liars - E. Lockhart
Genre: Gen, Spin-Off, young adult
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-25
Updated: 2017-03-25
Packaged: 2018-10-10 11:17:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10436478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thealphadog/pseuds/thealphadog
Summary: - An extra chapter at the end of the novelOne last time. Beechwood. The sun through her hair. Her Liars by her side. Cadence isn't looking for redemption, or rediscovery, she's looking for freedom.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hiya! So this is the first published work of mine on this website and I'm super excited. I wrote this for my English coursework assignment, which was to take a fiction novel and recreate it into a different text style, so I decided to write an alternate ending to We Were Liars.  
> I've read this book so many times that I lost count. I've grieved and cried. I put my heart and soul into this extract and even though it's short it's my take on the story and I wanted to get it out there.  
> I'm so open to criticisms (and Kudos) so hit me with your best shot, and leave suggestions for other E.Lockhart books that I could possibly write a spin-off for (I love her works, seriously).

Being away from Beechwood was like being away from the sun.  
Colder.  
Darker.  
Like a headache you can’t escape, no matter how many pills you consume. 

Being away from my Liars; that was different. 

It was a thorn in my foot that I’d never be able to pull out. They were always on my mind, on my skin, whispering in the air that I breathed; even though it had been two years since they burned so beautifully in Clairmont, their embers scattered across the stars like paint splashes on a canvas. 

Poor, young Cadence Sinclair, in her big house atop the hill with Mummy and the dogs, yet still utterly alone in her own mind.  
Poor, sad Cadence Sinclair, whose Daddy left, taking with him their hope, love and money, leaving nothing but a bullet wound straight through her heart.  
Poor, murderous Cadence Sinclair, who is the reason her friends are dead, left to die in the flames on Beechwood Island while she lives an elegantly depressing life.

The migraines didn’t stop, even after I knew about the Liars. They continued, but more disastrously, digging up my darkest thoughts and sucking out the good ones, leaving me face down on Mummy’s cashmere rug for hours at a time, Gat and Mirrin and Johnny’s pristine faces smiling at me in disgust.

“You did this, Cadence.” Johnny laughs.

“Look at my crisp hair, Cadence. I’ll never get a boyfriend,” Mirrin giggles.

“You killed us, Cadence. You killed us,” Gat chuckles.

All of them so full of gleeful resentment. They wield arrows and fire them at me when they want me to hurt; they infiltrate my home and stroke the dogs; they share a bottle of wine with Mummy, or maybe two, just so she’s intoxicated enough to disappear into regretful tears about my father. Then, Gat grabs the letter opener from the kitchen island and they laugh all the way up the stairs to my cave. 

Mirrin caresses my photos and trinkets, giggling all the while at the times we shared.

Johnny looks in my mirror and poses, grinning at the handsome genes he inherited. 

Gat, my Gat. He sits with me as I whimper on my bed. He strokes my hair and tells me everything will be fine. He kisses my forehead and hums the tune to a lullaby. As I fall asleep serenely, he lifts my face so we are locked in time; but his eyes are so black that I can’t recognise him anymore; the old smell of ground coffee has faded from his skin.

“Cady.” He whispers gently. 

Then, in one swipe, he slits my throat with the letter opener. 

“Cadence, wake up.” Mummy demands. She grabs my shoulders and shakes me awake, away from all that I caused, my childish screaming dissolving into pathetic sobs. 

My full name is Cadence Sinclair-Eastman.  
I live in Burlington, Vermont, with Mummy and three dogs.  
I am nineteen years’ old.  
I used to have blonde hair, but it is now black.  
I used to have a sane mind, but now it mocks my intelligence.  
I used to have my Liars, but I killed them.

“You sound like a crazy person, Cadence.” Mummy pours herself a large glass of Chardonnay and takes a small sip, goes to put the glass on the counter, but retraces her steps and downs half its contents.

“Perhaps I am,” I say, bluntly. Mummy glares at me like I’m a disappointment. She sighs, and her salon blonde curls fall from their set place on her shoulders. 

“Grandad won’t be there at that time-,” 

“Good.” My mouth moves without control, overridden by my sick mind. 

She looks up at me, her eyes revealing less of herself than is possible, but Mummy has always been a private person. I stare back, emotionless as a tile of slate, cold and grey and sharp. “Cadence,” And she is about to cry; I know that face well.

Her pursed mouth relaxes into a pretty frown, her piercing eyes subside into glassy, caring orbs. She sticks out her hand for me to take, and I do, because there is a time and a place to refuse your mother. “Will it help you? Going back there?” Her fake, pink painted nails caress my palm affectionately. 

Am I simply going back to Beechwood to help myself, or my Liars? 

Am I simply going back to see if they’re still there, to sooth me and bandage the wounds that I did to myself? 

I don’t know, yet I nod at Mummy as we both begin crying. They’re crystal tears of a beautifully sad tale, one that Kings and Queens will tell their subjects, one of great sorrow and anguish.

I don’t know, but I do know, that I have to go back. 

Alone.

The same breeze hits me as I stand on the dock of Beechwood. The aroma, the sound of the waves, the faint smell of ash, and the monstrosity that is New Clairmont; all shiny and new and the opposite of Old Clairmont, though it is erected from the crumbled remains of that beautiful house. 

To the left are Windemere and Red Gate, mine and Mummy’s and Aunt Bess’s houses. To the right is Cuddledown, where I spent the duration of Summer ’17 with my Liars. Or their ghosts, or their memories. But they were so real. They were so perfect. And I poured red paint all over them.

I leave my bags in the speed boat and run, to that rickety, falling down Cuddledown, where I last saw my Liars in their wonder and amazement, before abandoning them along with my innocence, my control, my sanity.

“Gat!” I cry, pulling the door open and whipping it on its frame. “Mirrin! Johnny! I’m back!” Running through the kitchen, the playroom, the upstairs, spotting old stains of tea and coffee, old scrabble tiles and stopping by the top floor window that drops down to the rocky shore of the ocean. 

Breathing heavily, my lungs screaming, my head screeching; I know that they’re gone.  
They’re disgusted.  
They’re ashamed. 

Cadence is a sad excuse for a Sinclair, a sad excuse for a friend, a sad excuse for a human being. They think in unison and chant together directly at me. 

“Please, please,” I whisper and place a hand against the window, the sound of the waves overwhelming against the jagged shore. A slight push and the window is open, the cold spray of the sea hitting me, but not registering in my mind as vapour,  
but as a hand. 

A warm hand leading me to my Liars.

“Please.”

I step confidently onto the ledge, and I feel the love, the understanding, that the sea can offer me. 

“Cady! Come on!” Gat yells from down below. Mirrin and Johnny swim next to him, their hair soaked with salt water and skin burnt from the midday sun.

My Liars. There they are. 

“I’m coming!” I yell, the warm hand of the ocean leading me further through the window. The sensation of them being close encasing me once more. “I’m coming.”

And on my way down  
my only thought is of Mummy  
and how mad she’ll be that I got my clothes wet.


End file.
